Wednesday, 31 January 2001

Chapter One: Death and Departure

CHAPTER ONE: Death and Departure (Cases 1 & 2)

Case 1:

"Oh, my god! I'm not really dead - am I? I mean, my body is dead - I can see it below me - but I am floating...I can look down and see my body lying flat in the hospital bed. Everyone around me thinks I'm dead, but I'm not. I want to shout, hey, I'm not really dead! This is so incredible...the nurses are pulling a sheet over my head...people I know are crying. I'm supposed to be dead, but I'm still alive! It's strange, because my body is absolutely dead while I'm moving around it from above. I'm alive!"

1. These words were spoken by a man in deep hypnosis, reliving a death experience. A little earlier, following instructions during trance induction, he was age-regressed in a return to childhood memories. He was then moved through an imaginary time tunnel to his last life on Earth.

2. This man feels what it is like to be a spirit newly separated from a physical body.

“Well…I’m rising higher…still floating…looking back at my body. It’s like watching a movie, only I’m in it! The doctor is comforting my wife and daughter. My wife is sobbing (subject wiggles with discomfort in his chair). I’m trying to reach into her mind…to tell her everything is all right with me. She is so overcome by grief I’m not getting through. I want her to know my suffering is gone…I’m free of my body…I don’t need it any more…that I will wait for her. I want her to know that…but she is…not listening to me. Oh, I‘m moving away now…”

3. The process of moving further into the spirit world starts.

4. Souls are quite capable of leaving and returning to their host bodies, particularly in life threatening situations when the body is dying.

5. The descriptions of subjects mentally going through their past deaths do not contradict the reported statements of people who have actually died in this life for a few minutes. People in deep trance state are capable of describing what life is like after permanent physical death.

6. Similarities between the two groups:

- Both find themselves floating around their bodies

- Both report being frustrated in their attempts to talk to living people who don’t respond

- Both feel a pulling sensation away from the place where they died

- Both experience relaxation and curiosity rather than fear

- Both feel a euphoric sense of freedom and brightness around them

- Both experience the “tunnel effect” of brilliant whiteness totally surrounding them or the brightness is farther away from an area of darker space through which they are being pulled.

1. Souls often leave their human hosts moments before actual death when their bodies are in great pain. Nevertheless they do stay close by the dying body

2. Contrary to what some people believe, souls often have little interest in what happens to their bodies once they are physically dead. This is not callousness over personal situations and the people they leave behind on Earth, but an acknowledgement of these souls to the finality of mortal death. They have a desire to hurry on their way to the beauty of the spirit world.

3. However, many others want to hover around the place where they died for a few Earth days, usually until after their funerals. Time is apparently accelerated for souls and days on Earth may be only minutes to them.

4. There are a variety of motivations for the lingering soul:

- Those who have been murdered or killed unexpectedly in an accident often do not leave right away. These souls are frequently bewildered or angry. The hovering soul syndrome is particularly true of deaths with young people.

- To abruptly detach from a human form, even after a long illness, is still a jolt for the average soul. There is also something symbolic about the normal three-day funeral. Though souls really have no morbid curiosity to see their funerals (emotions in the spirit world are not the same as we experience here on Earth), soul entities appreciate the respect given to the memory of their physical life by surviving relatives and friends.

- One basic reason is the desire to mentally reach out to comfort loved ones before progressing further into the spirit world. The departed soul knows those left on Earth will see them again in the spirit world and probably later in other lives as well. But on the other hand, mourners at a funeral generally feel they have lost a loved one forever.

5. The comforting soul. Many subjects recall frustration at being unable to effectively use their energy to mentally touch a human being who is unreceptive due to shock and grief, yet:

- When the newly departed soul does find a way to give solace to the living - however briefly – they usually are satisfied and want to then move on quickly away from Earth’s astral plane

- We are capable of feeling the comforting of the souls of lost loved ones, especially during or right after funerals

- Subjects say that as souls they are able to help those on Earth connect their inner minds to the spirit world itself. As it has been wisely said, people are not really gone as long as they are remembered by those left on Earth. Death does not break our continuity with the immortal soul of those we love simply because they have lost the physical personhood of a mortal body. Despite their many activities, these departed souls are still able to reach us if called upon.

6. The disturbed spirit. Occasionally, a spirit does not want to leave the Earth after physical death. This is due to some unresolved problem which has had a severe impact on its consciousness. In these abnormal cases, help is available from higher, caring entities who can assist in the adjustment process from the other side. The enigma of ghosts portrayed in books and movies has been greatly overblown.

7. How should we best perceive and prepare for our own death? If we have a long illness leading to death, there is time to adequately prepare the mind once initial shock, denial and depression have passed. When we face death suddenly, the mind takes a short cut through this sort of progression.

- As the end of our physical life draws near, each of us has the capacity to fuse with our higher consciousness. Dying is the easiest period in our lives for spiritual awareness, when we can sense our soul is connected to the eternity of time.

- Almost everyone acquires a peaceful detachment near the end as if, dying people are given access to a supreme knowledge of eternal consciousness and this frequently shows in their faces. Many realize something universal is out there waiting and it will be good.

Dying people are undergoing a metamorphosis of separation by their souls from an adopted body. People associated death as losing our life force, when actually the opposite is true. We forfeit our body in death, but our eternal life energy unites with the force of a divine oversoul. Death is not darkness, but light.